Marketing ethics in brand alliances between large enterprises and SMEs, a dyadic approach.

Abstract

The research focuses on the marketing ethics during the value co-creation process in the brand alliances between large enterprises and SMEs. The study uncovers the hidden agreements between partner brands that violate the main principles of marketing ethics such as preserving the conditions of an acceptable exchange, the perfect competition ideal and mutuality. Collaborations, where two or more brands come together to form an alliance, are increasingly popular among brands (Yan & Cao, 2017). Brands form an alliance to achieve more than they do on their own (Lewis, 1999) and to create a synergistic collaboration with the expectation of creating a sum greater than the parts (Rodrigue & Biswas, 2004). Although extensive studies have addressed ethical issues in marketing in the last decades; such studies remained more focused on the empirical questions rather than the normative issues such as problematic ethical issues in marketing (Elegido, 2016). The literature proposes the main principles of marketing ethics as consumer sovereignty, preserving the conditions of an acceptable exchange, paternalism, the perfect competition ideal, and mutuality (Elegido, 2016). According to Abela and Murphy (2007), the foundational premises of S-D logic have implicit ethical content. Such views are contradicted by Willams and Aitken (2011) claiming the need for explicit ethical content. The ethical issues in marketing not only arise between the company and its clients (Elegido, 2016) but also with the other stakeholders such as partner brands, rival brands and suppliers (Williams and Aitken, 2011). Thus, the value co-creation process between the partner brands in a brand alliance should be thoroughly analysed to understand how the principles of marketing ethics are implemented by the partner brands involved in value co-creation.